


Curio

by sian22



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-16 04:22:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28700607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sian22/pseuds/sian22
Summary: Is there forgiveness in the world?  So we all hold and hope, journeying shadowed, unfamiliar paths.  But sometimes, just sometimes, new doors open once again.--------------------The world that was is myth.  Cathedrals are the new religion. Or internet.  Or tv.  The small island has lost a part of its deep mystery long after cathedrals of trees began to sprout through the once great hall’s foundation, and puppets, rulers vastly more modest than the Steward’s line now sit on short chairs and pretend they wield honour as of old.A name comes back.  Annuminas.Why has he not come this way before?  The restlessness never ceases even as the air of mystery dims.  It hurts, at times, to walk unseen and unlamented through a younger, wider world; emptiness chasing him far across many lands, sticking always to the shores of the remade World…
Comments: 3
Kudos: 18





	Curio

**Author's Note:**

> My piece of December's Teitho challenge Gems and Jewels, where it tied for first.
> 
> Thank you so much to Annafan and Altariel for betaing.

The hiker who trudges down Bala’s western shore shoves his slim bare hands deeper into his capacious pockets and tugs the brim of his baseball cap down low for the wind is biting and the iron cloud hovers like a shroud. It is grey and drizzling-hardly a convivial morning for a stroll but he frowns, warily picking his footing across muddied ruts for he has eschewed the well-worn east. The usual tourist trail is full of the well-intentioned: the Gortex-clad who oft accost a lone traveller because they mistakenly assume he has need of advice. Or even more mistakenly assume he welcomes pointless pleasantries. 

He does not. A glare sometimes works. Or a growl. But when the inevitable happens and they collect at a stile like oddly garish flotsam, he will nod curtly as he hustles past, eyes bright in an ageless face, short ponytail bobby slightly. His own kit is deliberately old-school: Cabourn jacket and hickory walking stick; hat faded by sun and time and leather boots that are a hairsbreadth from their bitter end. A purist obviously. Or one who simply will never waste all too infrequent coin.

Comfortable once more, his long legs stretch out to eat up the miles. Away to the west, the hilly shoulders of Arenig rise soft and green like a damsel clad in silken spring but the lake beside lies dark. The wind whips its normally placid waters into whitecaps that dance and plunge like steeds jockeying for position with the few hardy paddleboarders clinging bravely on. 

At Llanycil he is forced to stop and marshal reinforcements--pulls up his buff to cover chin and cheeks for he is not yet used to Britain’s damp. Six months spent as far south as he is north have not prepared him for this clime. It is merciless—a heavy wetness like day-old, sweated-in woollens that clings; lingering but not quite erasing the freshness of the morning air or the warmth of breakfast’s milky tea and melting scones.

Or the sound of his hostess’ enthusiastic chat. 

_He sits down to a sprigged tablecloth and dainty china that rests like a child’s toy in his long, expressive hands._

_“Good morning, Mr Smith,” the landlady twinkles, pouring scalding Assam into the hideous, pink-flowered cup and using the name he gives for it amuses him._

_It isn’t even entirely wrong. “Good morning, Madam.”_

_“Tuck in,” she urges, setting a generously piled, groaning plate before him and folding her hands expectantly. “You shall need that lot walking Ddaullt. The day promises to be raw.”_

_He does not correct her. Ddaullt is indeed the prize for most trekkers in these parts but not his goal. He has stood on its wild and windswept height--shouted into the teeth of a gale, hurling a heart’s pointless, ragged pain into the swirling air._

_It didn’t help. And he has learned to value his privacy more than other single thing._

_“Where are you from then?” she asks,_ almost _innocently, one hand dangerously close to landing on his chair. “South Africa? New Zealand? Your accent is familiar yet I cannot place it.”_

_He smiles inside for the answer he keeps ready is technically correct. He has tried to imitate blander, less exotic tones but no amount of practise erases its essential singsong quality. “The West Country…”_

_“Ah, I see,” she says, though the furrow on her brow shows that she does not. A hand cradles a wrinkled cheek in puzzlement, waiting for details that do not emerge. The excuse_ _before him is most convenient: barabrith, eggs, and a most excellent sloe and apple jam._

_He remembers (just) to give a compliment for she is a kindly thing-a widow who welcomed a decidedly unsavory looking stranger into her home._

_(And her long, antique claw-foot bath is so deep his knees had not stuck a foot above the waterline_. )

_He waves a triangle of toast thickly slathered with rich purple. “This is most excellent, Mrs. Parry.”_

_She preens under the force of his rare, shy smile._

There. He has socialized, done his good deed for the day. Now he pulls out a map, plots a route that skirts the shore, hugging farmland rolling down to waters fabled to hide Taliesin’s twice-drowned court. 

He cannot say exactly what brought him here—an itch perhaps. _Hiraeth_ as the Welsh would say, a longing to visit old haunts again, one after another. Florence was too packed with gawking tourists to ring anything but odd. Oxford had been quaint as ever. But Merioneth he hopes can assuage a bone-deep ache that hangs dark and heavy, like a tarnished tong left too long at the fireside. 

By the river’s outlet, a rheumy-eyed farmer stands in wind-reddened cheeks and stained oilskin, puffing on a briar that fumes lazily between his yellowed teeth. “A wild one,” the oldster offers, speaking of the storm the night before whilst at his feet a collie dog crouches eagerly, like a jack-in-box about to spring.

“Howled like the Hunt about the eaves.”

“Aya.”

The hiker nods, raises one hand in silent farewell and continues on, down past the tilled and tamed to the abandoned: a bracken strewn slope nestled in Bala’s final vee. It is comforting in its way, held gently in the palms of a small copse of sessile oak and beech-- the last, now prized, stalwarts of a battle lasting centuries. 

_The Land remembers_ , he thinks, sitting at the foot of the diminished lake. _Here_. Here the ache wants him to linger, to rest a piece and so he does, sipping from a small silver flask while a gust of wind tugs strands of coal-black hair across his face.

_I am still here. I am still here and my memories._

Behind, the soil-clad roots of a freshly upturned oak creak and clatter in the wind, reaching upward like ghostly, flailing arms, and on a whim, he rises to inspect the storm’s windfall. The Old Man’s demise has exposed a jumble of creamy, mottled white: not fieldstones, not boulders smoothed in a glacier’s gritty bed, but pavers. Chiseled and shaped. Laid running bond for a once-proud floor. 

A sudden tide swells insistently in his blood. 

He sets faintly shaking fingers into the small hollow’s dim, pulls at slabs and soil, shoves them ruthlessly aside with a surge of energy. They are old, covered with many seasons’ filmy coat of greyish clay the same shade as the many small shards of pottery, and he digs harder, faster; spurred on by the finds yet not certain of what he seeks. 

A last, desperate scrabble upends another heavy block… to show…

_A pebble?_

He straightens slowly, turns his cap and inspects the treasure in a waning shaft of light, rubs his brow in puzzlement. The rock is smooth and dun, at first glance unremarkable; smaller than his palm, cool and hard and enigmatic; clearly not frost-heave, not the dark shale of the mountain thrust out of place or the baked limestone of the elder settlement. The small oval is crudely polished, its edges worn by water or gravity, opaque and decidedly odd for the Dee’s course was a mile or more away. 

Could the river have once burst its banks? Could the lake have tossed some stray exotic shingle up? 

The answer seems most improbable and yet he, of anyone, knows well one certain truth.

Nothing-nothing of the world remains unchanged by time.   
  


_Haven_

“Do not go too close Amar!”

“I will not Mama!”

The barefoot little boy and his cousin roll their ebon eyes in unison, grin with cheeks pink flushed and dark hair flying in the breeze for exhortations from doting adults are to be bent, if not outright ignored, and so they pelt down the wide, endless sandy shore, edging as close to the tide line as they dare. Back at the nearer headland mothers, aunts and bigger sisters stand in the gently spraying surf-- skirts tied up, bare tawny legs and arms gleaming in the last of the westerning sun. They cast their roughspun nets beneath a cloud of diving seabirds, eyes trained on the surging schools of fish and occasionally the boys.

‘She doesn’t trust us,’ grumbles Amar when another hail sails forth. 

“She doesn’t trust the Sea, I think,” notes Kor practically, and Amar nods at this. None of them really do. Not Ma or Da, or even his strong, big brother Mal. Not one of their group has stepped in beyond their knees to test the swiftly dropping slope for this is not the oily, shallow Nurn of their servitude. The Sea is wide and deep and rolls away beyond their sight—a force to be wary and respectful of. 

And grateful for. A year after the Shadow has passed they have a new life and a new home. Da and Ma and a dozen families accepted the King’s kind offer, journeyed endlessly under the watchful eye of the tall Dúnedain until it felt that they’d fall right off the edge of Middle-earth. Harlond this land is called. An Elf-haven so far disappointingly devoid of Elves--- except for the Lord Círdan who’d formally welcomed them. He is a being so high and shining, so awe-inspiring, that Amar can hardly raise his face before him, before the deep music of that voice and yet when he does the ellon’s eyes are keen and kind as stars. They make Amar want to hold his breath.

“Over here!” yells Kor, waving a hand to break Amar from his reverie. The older boy has found a motherload. Beyond a pile of salt-crusted, wind-tangled fishbones, the sea has thrown up a veritable dragon’s hoard of shells. Fluted arks and augers. Clams and cockles. Nauticas and lacy scallops. All so much bigger and more entrancing than Nurn’s reluctant wrack.

They ignore the rows of lustrous rasors in favour of the high whorled mures, turning each carefully over in the hope of catching a squatting hermit crab. Kor finds a snail that slumbers even though he’s moved; Amar, wide-eyed with delighted fright, squeals when a nameless, pale, tentacled tenant pulls back in. It is a miracle. They ignore grumbling tummies and aching backs, stash their finds in small withy nets—until the calling begins to sound annoyed. 

“We need to go.” 

Kor straightens but Amar sinks his fingers further in down into bliss one last time; shoving cream and pink fragments aside until he finds.. a pebble.

“That’s not a shell,” points out his cousin in the lofty way of older wiser ones. “Set and Bram will only give berries for good shells. Rocks are everywhere.”

Amar deflates. Set and Bram, their next biggest brothers, have all the luck. _They_ get to join the Men out reconnoitering the grassy plains behind their village, climbing up to the gentle, nearer hills and returning home each day with fingers currant-stained.

They will share their bounty but only if the ‘littles’ have something to trade for.

“I like it,” Amar mumbles mutinously, turning the pleasing thing around in his stubby hand. Its pale and dusky sides are elegant: faceted and coated by tumbling ages and ages in Ullubôz’s pounding surf. No algae or stinking seaweed clings. No red coral has marred its face. 

“I think that I will keep it,” he announces to the persimmon glow of the fading sun, settling the find gently amongst its fragile neighbours.

“Amar!!” 

Time to go. There will be grilled fish and fat sweet scallops and the oddly chewy, briny oysters. He jumps up, brushes wet sand hastily off his knees and runs grinning after a whooping Kor until their footprints are washed into a ghostly trail upon the strand. 

_Escape_

Many miles and seasons later, Amar is a man grown and full in prime. He kneels in wet, leaf strewn loam, nose reddened by the cold but fury burning brightly in his chest. Beside him Lala soothes their girls, holds them tight as the cutpurses’ rifle through pockets and strip each of them of coin and bangle, knives and wares. 

_To Mordor with you all,_ he curses below his breath, hoping against hope that they will not take the horses. The year has turned chill untimely---it makes the thieves more bold, sets them to praying on simple folk returning from Tharbad. Sarn is close, but a titch too far, they’ll be on their own to trundle back.

Or so he thinks. The sound of horns high and clear bell in the misty distance. The youngest thief, mild-eyed for his bravado is a thin veneer of lime across a wattle wall, yanks a piece of rope and the sea stone out of Amar’s innermost pocket and turns with his compatriots to run.

“It’s the King’s Men! Quick, hand it over.” 

The lad displays this dubious treasure and gets a swift backhand for his pains. “Worthless, just like you,” spits their tall, grizzled leader with an air of perpetual impatience. A father? An uncle? Amar isn’t sure but their beaky noses do look the same. 

The horns sound louder. “Away.. now!”

The gang turns in a jumble of dark hoods and satchels, flee up an iced over tributary hoping to leave no tracks behind. The youngest brings up the rear, arms wheeling for balance, falling in his haste but jumping up again; turning out of sight through the willows as the victims feel the first welcome thunder of hoofbeats drawing near.

At the riverlet’s second branch, the little thief, heart-pounding and red cheek stinging in the wind, casts down the rock without another thought.

_Patience_

The land has rung with war again before a joyous Spring bursts forth. Below the greening boughs, below buds swelling and sparrows flitting branch to branch, a man comes skipping down the river’s course, whistling like a bird himself as snowdrops and blue scilla nod alongside the feather in his hat. 

By a deep cut in the gravel bank he stops and stoops to drink of the crisp, cold snowmelt. Beside one yellow boot the pebble lies glinting mutely in the sun, no worse for wind and water. Wedged into the muck, it shimmers, winks at his gaily bobbing feather and sharp as a hawk, the little man whirls to cast his gaze upon it. 

“Ai now, a derry-o, a merry-o, what’s old Pourer cast up for me?”

The clear glad water ripples at his words, sends catkins spinning by. At once the blue coat bends; fingers reach sure and strong to pluck the slumbering stone. It is big as a plovers’ egg. Many-shaded in tones of wheat, like the pale, shy primrose or a finch’s tawny breast.

“Well,” says Tom, for that _is_ who he is and shall ever be, from before the seas were bent until the last stars fall from the velvet sky.

He straightens and shoves his hat brim back, eyes fixed on his prize. Shaggy brows pull together as the plain stone is turned round and round. “Come now, thumb now. Here is a pretty bit for Tom to think upon!” 

The willow boughs sigh and rustle warily and the bulrush holds its breath. Tom rubs his nose, looks long on the stone’s mottled face; body suddenly subdued as if stirred by some memory. The forest denizens wait for the pronouncement until he shakes his head. “Foul was he who lost it once but fair is she that finds it,” he murmurs, and with that he reaches out, rearranges the humble stone on a moss-draped, dreaming log above the spring’s high spate, and bows.

“‘Berry and Tom do not forget. By many hands down many roads, ye’ll find the one who’s meant to see.”

_Honour_

“Ada, Ada! Look what I found!” 

The thin, hunched Dunadan sighs and sets his tools aside, wipes wet fingers on a soft rag and scratches at the craggy scar across his chin as the little girl prances up. ‘ _Oh lass’_ , Dene chuckles to himself. Lily is far from neat and tidy as is possible to get and still not _be_ a Barrow-Wight. Her cheeks are reddened by the wind. Her much-patched skirt is muddied round the hem, long braids strewn with leaves and coming out in a tangled mess of brown that could do credit to a kitten with a ball of string. 

Might as well ask Earendil to keep Vingolot in port as keep Lily from her wandering. Both are sure as day. Both shine with the thrill of discovery.

“Bring it here, lovey,” he gestures, turning from his bench. “What have you got for Dene?” 

Lily positively vibrates with excitement, holding out a small, roughened hand and opening it carefully. “I found this by the stream. On a fallen log when I tried to catch a toad.”

 _‘By’?_ ‘In’ seems more likely from the wet soaking up her skirt, past her ankles almost to her knees, but Dene does not grouse. He’s thrown her in the Brandywine himself, taught her to swim as solidly as any trout so there’s naught to worry on _that_ score. 

“A gem,” she breathes as green-grey eyes look up through long lashes expectantly. “I think it might be…..diamond.”

This last is uttered with an almost reverent hush that sets a spark of pride burning in Dene’s chest. Lily may not have fossicking in her blood but she’s memorized his every word; learned fool’s gold from true; knows quartz and granite, and even marl, but placer diamond---excusing the pun---is a rather harder thing.

“Let us have a squint.”

He makes a great show of pulling out his loupe, screws the precious magnifier into an eye socket and hums quietly to himself. Diamonds, found in the Glanduin of old or Arthedain’s ancient rock in the deserted channels of exhausted torrents, are Arda’s hardest stone. And most valuable. They hide a softer fire than ruby or the gay purple of amethyst--all colours at once bound into a single sparkling heart. 

He takes out his knife and gives the surface a cautious scratch. A thin mark streaks across the muted fawn. “Tis not hard enough, lass, or the outside any rate. I’m sorry,” he says, shaking his head and turning the odd thing round and round, puzzled and not entirely certain what it is. To its credit, the stone is a roughly octahedral shape, but there are many lesser jewels the same. “Diamond is said to be spitted out of the bones of Arda,” he adds. “Each can only cut the other. This tawny bit is softer.”

A set of narrow shoulders droop. He hands the find back, noting with a sinking in his stomach the cloud of disappointment on Lily’s dirt-smudged face.

The rock cannot have come too far, hasn’t ventured miles and miles with the groaning river’s load. Its creamy, worn surface still has lumps and bumps, like a day’s sourdough before its baked but it wouldn’t hurt to cheer her up. 

“Tis a pretty thing, sure enough. Shall I polish it up a bit? Make it smoother, fancy as I can?”

A thin face brightens quickly. “Oh, yes please, Ada. It is special for it is a foundling.” 

_Nienna_. Dene’s heart clenches hard at that.

Once he had been an angry man. ‘ _Adversity is the diamond Mahal polishes his jewels with_ ,’ say the Dwarf-friends he once apprenticed to and Dene knows this too well, railing at the Valar who let The New Shadow rip his wife and babe away. 

In the aftermath he had stumbled with the bandaged, exhausted parade of refugees that swelled village after village and nursed a growing rage. Some spoke of hope, some spoke of building anew again. Not Dene. Mile after mile they drew closer to the safety of the Downs, yet he’d been unable to feel anything but the bitter bile that crested in his chest.

At Middown he left the road and knelt in a grove of red maples bleeding with the Fall. There he ripped open his leather jerkin, drew his muddied sword and thought: _End it now. End it quick._

But Mandos had other plans for him. The moment Dene had set the blade’s shaking tip to the hard white of his stomach a wail, high and thin, one that every father knew, pierced his grieving fog. 

A child. A fevered child was crying.

He lurched to his knees, turned on trembling feet until the sound grew clearer; stuttering now as the poor mite’s breath grew weak. In the hazy light he staggered to the dark bulk of an ancient yew, shoved a curtain of hanging vine aside, and found—a girl. 

Inside a ragged hollow there nestled a little one no more than two, fine dark wisps of hair curling about her chin, eyes burning bright as meteors in a tear-streaked, shrunken face. On her shoulders lay a soot-smelling blanket embroidered with a band of lilies. A foundling. Hidden from the Orc-host? He looked about but saw only trees and loam. Slowly, gingerly, he pulled the delicate bundle clear, cradled her fevered brow against his chest and thought: ‘ _I will save you_.’ 

But really it was the other way around.

Blinking back the sudden tears, Dene rubs at his scar again and chances a watery smile. The lance of swift grief is relegated again to memory and he finds he has to breathe around the tight happiness that pours in to fill its place. 

‘Aye lass,” he says, voice thick and low as he takes up the grinding cloth, “tis special. Just like you’

_Home_

Six years fly by like a flock of white-winged geese. Middown is festooned with bunting and sunny faces; the whole town turned out to make welcome the new Princess who will tour the freshly cobbled streets.

It is a sign of the now peaceful times that the Crown Prince has ventured north once more; visiting his uncles in Rivendell and showing off the lovely southern girl who has caught his heart. These lands are his first birthright. He is always happy here and it is a perfectly glorious summer day: warm and fine, overflowing with goodwill and strawberries, fresh ale and enthusiasm.

Over in the central square, Mellien, Crown Princess of much of Middle-earth, adjusts her gloves nervously, pats a flying ribbon down and sincerely hopes that the townsfolk do not find her a disappointment. She is unfortunately not exotic. Not an ethereal Evenstar once mistaken for the greatest beauty to walk Arda’s hallowed shores. Nor a high-hearted, glowing Shieldmaiden, the literal savior of their times. Mel is ordinary—a tall, sable-haired lass of Ringlo Vale, the tomboyish big sister to Lord Ringlo’s seven boys. And while she prides herself on being capable of handling most any situation, _this_ , the first of weeks of official appearances, is a trifle intimidating. The square is absolutely thronged, the townsfolk stand shoulder to shoulder like upright sardines packed into a crock.

If only Eldarion were joining her today and not tomorrow.

“What do I do?” she whispers worriedly to Elboron who hovers helpfully at her elbow. Gondor’s future Steward and Ithilien’s eldest Prince looks wonderfully regal himself, clad in silver and ebony and crowned by his mother’s golden hair. She wishes she weren’t so drab. “I feel like a trader hawking substandard wares. I’ve not a delicate, regal bone in my body.” 

Elboron chuckles low. “A point in your favour, Mel. Eldarion has had rather enough of simpering elegance at court. It is exactly why he chose you over every other woman in the realm.” He glances down, smiles his uncle’s sunrise smile and winks. “Just be yourself _. You_ are what they want to see, not Dari’s ugly mug.”

Mellien hides a sudden giggle. This teasing, so familiar, so much a part of her husband and his sword brother as the ridiculous running jests, the pranks and japes and wrestling contests, has not stopped because they are grown. 

It sets her at ease at once. “Thank you. I think.”

Elboron shifts his winged helm to his other elbow to offer her a hand. “Count on it.”

Thus bolstered, the Crown Princess straightens her back, raises her chin and takes it, sets off on parade, trailed by a small contingent of Elessar’s guard. She focuses on greeting as many people as she can, collecting the many nosegays of summer phlox and fragrant rose, the small jars of honey or preserves shyly offered up. The good people are courteous and dressed up in their best shined boots and ironed ribbons. 

She does her best to acknowledge all their effort.

“So kind.”

“Thank you, goodwife.”

“Blessings upon your home.”

Down the thoroughfare she glides, shoulders starting to relax with each firmer step. They want her! They really do! The people want to meet the Prince Eldarion’s new bride and Mellien may not see it, but they certainly do: she shines. The gentle, genuinely caring heart that bowled over a slightly standoffish Prince cannot be hidden by petticoats and lace. It is there in every word and gesture. Every swift smile and nod of head. 

“Mellien, over there.” Elboron points to a gangly, coltish girl almost hidden by a wide and ample, smiling matron. She stands on tip-toe, blue hair ribbon bobbing gaily as she wriggles with the need to catch the Princess’s attention.

“Oh yes.”

Mellien stops before the child and the crowd parts to let her through, waiting as the child’s skirts dip in a semblance of proper curtsey. Her words breathe out in a rush. “I have a gift for you your highness. It is my most precious possession.” 

Mellien, eyes wide with surprise, graciously gives thanks, tries to not be bemused when the object is offered over. 

_How very odd? A rock._

It, and the girl, are still very much on her mind as she sits that eve at her dressing table, brushing out the long waterfall of glossy hair that shames even the shine of Evendim. 

“People were so kind.”

Eldarion looks up from the mountain of parchment that pins him to his chair and raises one fine brow. Despite the lateness of the hour his circlet and every strand of hair are perfectly in place. “Indeed. You were admired and feted in the free, fresh air. I was closeted with grumbling councillors.” 

What can she do but laugh at that? “You should sic Elboron on them. He has his father’s skills of subtlety.”

“Mhm. But also his mother’s temper. He’d have flipped the council table by tea time.” A rueful grin fades in favour of a grimace. ‘I don’t know how Father does it. They whinge and wheedle, disagree and argue until I simply want to scream.”

Mellien does her best to smile with sympathy. She has heard this complaint before. “You were utterly brilliant I am told.”

“Utterly boring, more like,” but still Eldarion flushes at the compliment, catches her adoring gaze and promptly dumps the scrolls with a heavy sigh. He looks at her _that_ way, sea-gray eyes following every steady stroke. The candlelight glints on the small hand mirror and one other thing.

He rises to inspect her table top. ‘Mel, what have you there?”

“Oh that.” she murmurs, setting the silver handled brush aside and fingering the rock. It glimmers softly fawn and cream; not exactly jewel-like, but neither stolid as a stone. “Tis pretty isn’t it? It was a gift. From a girl who said it was her most precious thing.”

Dari looks suitably impressed. “What is it?”

“I do not know. A rock or a rough gem? Tis such a simple thing yet I feel so oddly touched. It is beautiful in its own way. I wonder where she found it?”

“We should ask Gimli, he will have a guess.”

“Of course.”

Eldarion leans over then and takes his bride by the hand. Outside Ithil shimmers on the mirror surface of the lake; inside, an altogether warmer glow takes hold. Mellien is blushing like a rose of Lofnui and the kiss he plants upon her fingertips is not entirely chaste. 

“My heart,” whispers the future King of the Reunited Realms, “it is indeed a lovely gift. But not so beautiful as you. You are like the earth. You need no mortal jewel to shine.” 

_Reunion_

The hiker stands struck dumb and shivering while an awareness, a profound and wordless _knowing_ tugs deep. Like the excruciating embrace of gravity that comes only when one is falling from great height. 

The world that was is myth. Cathedrals are the new religion. Or internet. Or tv. The small island has lost a part of its deep mystery long after cathedrals of trees began to sprout through the once great hall’s foundation; and puppets, rulers vastly more modest than the Steward’s line, now sit on short chairs and pretend they wield honour as of old. 

A name comes back. _Annuminas_. 

Why has he not come this way before? The restlessness never ceases even as the air of mystery dims. It hurts, at times, to walk unseen and unlamented through a younger, wider world; emptiness chasing him far across many lands, sticking always to the shores of the remade World…

The lonely barrenlands kissed by tiny blooms that tumble to a rocky, icy sea.

The stark, red sands of another, wider island, traced by songlines in a sere and sunburnt plain.

The flat-topped, cloud-girt mountain garlanded in scarlet proteas. 

Once, he had been a story; a lesson to be learned. Now he is not even that. The modern bustle turns on: war and pestilence, art and music, all rise and fade. And change.

He is many things in many times. A troubadour. A mercenary. A shaggy poet spinning folktales. A muse. Always graceful, his Mother’s hands pulling sweet music from the harp or viol, but still they begin to shake as he lingers in one spot. 

This time of year when Autumn readies to shed her stunning cloak, he moves _mauka_ , land-ward, seeking the dappled light to ease his aching heart. Once, the trembling mallorn trees whispered as he passed, now even the prosaic pines are silent. _Old fool. Did you expect that they would remember you?_

He swallows around the lump lodging in his throat and runs a curious thumbnail across the stone’s surface. _What is it? Why does it call to me?_

And then the axis tilts. 

What the hands of men cannot do, years, and acid loam, and steady wet do not quail before. A barest valley opens up; a flake of outer coat like papery thin onionskin falls away, reveals the stone beneath and he finds he has to hold his breath.

A flash of long-muffled brightness leaps from the gem’s inner heart, shames the watery sun peaking through the iron overcast. It glimmers, rejoicing in the Light and accepting it, giving it back in a myriad hues each more marvellous than before. Bright and true like Anor upon a white gull’s wing or Kementari’s stars; pure and perfect as Ithil on snow-silvered Caradhras’ peak. 

There is radiance. And music. And here at the once wild end of things, forgiveness unlooked for. 

And then, the ellon who once cast his father’s Silmaril into Ulmo’s eternal Sea falls to his knees and weeps.

 _It does not burn_. 

_It does not burn_. 

_It does not burn._


End file.
